Nick Gibb: I share the hon. Lady’s support for Labour’s academisation programme, which is why we expanded it from 200 academies to over 6,000. She is fortunate to have in her constituency the Harris Federation, which is one of the most successful multi-academy trusts and school sponsors in the country. She should also want to acknowledge that funding for schools in Mitcham and Morden will rise by 7.3% under the national funding formula, and that Merton will receive an extra £6.3 million by 2019-20—a 5.4% increase in funding.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), in yet another highly effective speech on education, rightly pointed out that Dorset will receive a 4.2% increase and Poole a 3.8% increase under the full national funding formula. He also highlighted that England is rising up the PIRLS league table for the reading ability of our nine-year-olds. Reading is the basic fundamental building block, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who is sitting on the Opposition Back Bench, would acknowledge. This country’s adoption of phonics and the hard work of  primary school teachers up and down the country means that we have risen from joint 10th to joint eighth in the PIRLS world league table.
In her strong contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, effectively revealed Labour’s and the unions’ political motives for raising school funding. Lewes’s schools will see a 4.3% increase in funding under the national funding formula, but I will certainly come back to her on the three requests from the primary school in her constituency.
Although I think there is some consensus in the House about the principles underlying the national funding formula, we disagree with the Opposition on the overall amount. Is the £42.4 billion we are spending this year enough, and can our public finances afford more? Last July, we announced an additional £1.3 billion increase in overall school and high needs funding, over and above the increases agreed in the 2015 spending review—£416 million more for 2018-19 and £884 million more for 2019-20. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that school funding will be 50% higher in real terms per pupil by 2019-20 than in 2000.
However, we know that in the past two years schools have incurred increased costs, such as higher employer’s national insurance contributions and higher pensions contributions. Of course, both have applied to other public services, and higher national insurance has also applied to private sector employers. Those costs are all part of tax and revenue-raising measures that were introduced to help reduce the public sector budget deficit, which stood at £150 billion per year—10% of our GDP—when we came into office in 2010. That was unsustainable and would have been bankrupting if we had not addressed it. Thanks to the hard work of the British people and a series of difficult decisions, that deficit has reduced to £42.6 billion—2.1% of GDP—and is set to fall further.
Without that balanced approach to public spending and the public finances, we would not now have a strong economy providing young people with the job opportunities that a record number of jobs in the economy brings. Without that careful and balanced approach, we would not have been able to spend £42.4 billion on schools this year and allocate more than £23 billion to capital spending from 2016 to 2021, and we would not have created more than 800,000 new school places, with more in the pipeline; seen a rise in reading standards in our schools; helped schools raise the standard of maths teaching; allocated significant funds to music and the arts; ensured that 91% of 16-year-olds studied at least two science GCSEs, up from 62% in 2011; or seen 1.9 million more pupils in schools rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted than in 2010.
None of that would have been achieved if we had taken the hard left-wing approach to the public finances set out by Labour during and since the general election. Labour’s spend, spend, spend plans would mean £106 billion more public spending, wiping out in one blow eight years of hard work on deficit reduction. Its plans to nationalise a raft of industries would add £176 billion to the national debt. Its other plans would bring the increase in debt to £350 billion, costing us another £8 billion a year in higher interest charges—an amount  equal to nearly a fifth of the schools budget blown on increased debt interest charges to fund Labour’s spending plans.
What do we know about Labour’s statements and promises on spending? We know that they cannot be delivered without bankrupting the country. It would lead to a run on the pound, a flight of investment and a rise in unemployment—the hallmark of every period of Labour in office. That is why, no doubt, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, in a moment of candour, described Labour’s economic policy as “a bit of a” something “or bust” policy.
By contrast, because of our balanced approach to public spending, funding for schools under the national formula will ensure that every school attracts at least 0.5% more per pupil funding this year and 1% next year than in 2017, with thousands of schools receiving significantly more. It means that for schools that have historically had the very lowest funding, we can introduce a minimum of £3,500 per pupil for primary schools and £4,800 per pupil for secondary schools. It means that we can increase funding for special educational needs from £5 billion in 2013 to £6 billion this year.
Delivery, not promises, is what matters and this Government are delivering—delivering on the economy, delivering on jobs, delivering on school funding and delivering on academic standards.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes the Conservative Party manifesto pledge to make sure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new national funding formula, the statement by the Secretary of State for Education that each school will see at least a small cash terms increase and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s guarantee that every school would receive a cash terms increase; endorses the aim of ensuring that there is a cash increase in every school’s budget; agrees with the UK Statistics Authority that such an increase is not guaranteed by the national funding formula, which allows for reductions of up to 1.5 per cent in per pupil funding for schools; and calls on the Government to meet its guarantee, ensuring that every single school receives a cash increase in per pupil funding in every financial year of the 2017 Parliament.

Damian Green: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that cross-party working is necessary. I gently point out that when I was a member of the Government, I met him and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South in a cross-party group to discuss precisely this—I was responsible for this policy area at the time—because I wanted to work with them. I thought that was the only way forward when I was in government, and I still do.
There is not time today to go into detailed funding proposals, but I think we have to accept that in the long term the funding of social care will need to be not only more generous than it has been in recent years, but fair, and seen to be fair, to every generation. I make the point, which is not often made in this context, that intergenerational fairness means being fair to older people as well as younger people. The view has taken hold in some circles that being over 60 means being over-privileged. I strongly challenge that view. The current generation of 50 and 60-somethings is the first in which people are often simultaneously trying to help their children with housing and their parents with care needs. This is not special pleading for a particular cohort. It is important to remember the obvious but salient point that young people themselves will grow old. Setting one generation against another is not only a bad basis for policy making but very short-sighted for the individuals most affected. Instead, we need to find a solution that will provide stability for decades to come.
I suspect that Members on both sides of the House would be united by the proposition that, however much better we get at using technology and housing design to keep people in their own homes for longer, the sheer growth in the number of people needing some kind of care will mean that we need to find more money. Precisely because that will be a problem for decades, not just for the rest of this Parliament, it is vital that the solution has cross-party support. Social care is a challenge for all parties.
The fundamental issue of whether social care should be a national or local service is often ignored. I am struck that 44% of Kent County Council’s budget goes on adult social care. That number will only rise. I am also struck that, in contrast with almost every other area of policy that involves local government, when I talk to local councillors about this issue they say, “Maybe  this should be dealt with at a national rather than a local level.” They almost do not want it to be their responsibility any more. That is practically unique. I hope that Ministers will address that.
I urge Ministers to include staffing needs, the importance of which has been mentioned by Members on both sides of the House, in the Green Paper. Given what the wider situation will be post Brexit, we need to find ways of using technology, being much better at training care workers from the British population, and raising the status of care work. Labour Members mentioned that, and I agree. Looking at care purely as a business sector, it seems to me a classic case of somewhere that both technology and the human touch are vital. That combination is vital to providing high-quality care. To put it starkly, a robot may be able to do the lifting part of the work, but it cannot provide the equally necessary words of encouragement and comfort. I think social care will be an employment growth sector in the decades ahead.
Getting social care right is clearly one of this Government’s biggest challenges, as it will be for every Government for many decades to come. Over the next couple of years, we will have the chance to reset the debate so that it becomes calmer and more realistic. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), want to provide that calm and realism, and I hope that those of us contributing to this debate from the outside will live up to that, too. I very much look forward to the publication of the Green Paper.